The Lazy Gourmet

[Elok]

I am, at this point, the only grown man in my immediate family who isn't an expert cook.  It's a bit late in life for me to try to catch up, and besides, I'm too lazy to do all that junk my brother copies off the Food Network.  At present, I'm living in a house with three electric coil burners on the stove (the fourth was burned out by my FIL years ago), an oven that doesn't cook at the temperature you set it to, and a really awesome pressure cooker my wife got off the internet.  Also, no dishwasher.  Still very happy here, but I've got a limited repertoire.

What are your favorite lazy-but-good recipes?  I like pasta al'amatriciana, or rather a bastardized version thereof.  I got it off a Cooks Illustrated cookbook.  The real version hails from a suburb of Rome and involves pancetta, pecorino cheese, and an exotic hollow-tube pasta called bucatini.  This'n is bacon, parmesan and whatever noodle I've got handy.  It's real simple: cut up the bacon in bits and fry it, take out the bacon and fry onions in the grease, add diced tomato (canned will do) and cook until significant juice releases.  Add a modest amount of hot pepper.  Then mix it all, including the bacon, with your pasta and little parmesan cubes.  The end result is a mix of tart, sweet, smoky, salty and spicy flavors, beautifully balanced.

What do you cook when you're feeling lazy?

[Metaliturtle]

In college we made a sandwich called the Belly Bustin' Bacon Sammich.

We'd get the cheapo end cuts of bacon (cheapest bacon per pound by a large order of magnitude).

Fry the bacon up the way you like it. Remove from pan to serving plate.

2 pieces of bread, toss them in the hot pan.  You can butter the grill-side first if you want a more golden color. 

Add Shredded cheese to one piece of bread.

Add bacon from serving plate to the top of the cheese.

Make a sammich.

Put said sammich back onto the serving plate in the grease.

Eat.

[Buster's Uncle]

Let me wake up, and I got a few.

[Geo]

BUNCLE!!! Don't doze off again!!

[Buster's Uncle]

My brain.  Slow booting like my machine every morning...

[Lorizael]

If I'm feeling lazy, I eat Cheetos. If I'm feeling adventurous, I "cook" Pasta-Roni.

[Buster's Uncle]

My specialty dishes are all meat-in-the-oven, and hard to talk about since I don't use recipes and much varies according to the size and leanness of the cut.  Still waking up...

[Elok]

Lori, you might profit from the southern concept of "greens."  That's what it's called when you take any leafy vegetable and cook it in enough salt and animal fat to seemingly render the nutritional content of said vegetable moot.  But it still counts.  The very lazy version would be cooking frozen spinach in butter.  Tastes okay, introduces vitamins into your diet.  And it's really hard to get easier than that.

[Buster's Uncle]

Throw in a slice of bacon for better flavor on dishes like that.

[Geo]

Everything goes with bacon with you.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, this is an embarrassing truth, sir.

I just found out I'm grilling BBQ ribs for supper, too.

[Geo]

 
Something I missed during my stay: porch BBQ.

[Buster's Uncle]

You have to come back in warm weather; after you charmed everyone, you'd certainly be welcome.

(Folks, my pal, Mr. G.Modder, is a lovely person in analogue, though I'll lie if you try to repeat that I said so.)

[Buster's Uncle]

Time to go BBQ - maybe I'll post my non-recipe for my Barbeque sauce, which Mylochka finds to be, quote, "Epic".

Back in an hour or two...

[Rusty Edge]

I'm kind of out of sync here.

Lazy usually involves  a pizza oven, microwave, or soup can. Or sandwiches.

For a pasta dish like that- I prefer Rotini. Those corkscrews are good at holding sauce and bits of chopped stuff like bacon.